The facility, located in East Millstone, New Jersey, is to include a number of state-of-the art enhancements designed to ensure that cross-contamination of exposure groups do not compromise their respiratory safety assessment programs.
Huntingdon Life Sciences are a provider of pre-clinical research services in support of pharmaceutical product development and claim that companies developing inhaled pharmaceutical products are currently encountering a critical shortage of capacity and expert capabilities in meeting their preclinical testing requirements.
The additional capacity will be ready to accommodate studies by October 2005, which will provide new study scheduling opportunities for companies seeking world-class pharmaceutical inhalation expertise within the United States.
"Since we completed construction of the first phase of our inhalation facility expansion last year, we have filled this capacity and are booking studies into time slots much further into the future than any of our other product lines," said Mike Caulfield, general manager of Huntingdon Life Sciences' Princeton Research Centre.
Huntingdon is keen to use the facility to develop and assess pharmaceuticals and consumer chemicals, especially for treatments for respiratory disorders. The respiratory system is recognised as an increasingly important route for the administration of new drugs. The inhalation route is used to administer most drugs for the treatment of asthma and other respiratory conditions, as well as for a new generation of protein-based therapeutics.
Huntingdon is probably better known for being the focus of a violent campaign waged by animal activists in the UK. The company has been the target of a four-year campaign of violence, which has seen extremists attack homes of Huntingdon laboratory workers. Night-time raids, car vandalism and the graffiti on front doors and walls was also reported.